Credit card breaches are still a reality

Major retailers report being victims of data breaches in 2017

Published June 14, 2017

Over the past few weeks, several nationwide companies like K-Mart, GameStop, Brooks Brothers, and Chipotle Mexican Grill were allegedly the victims of data breaches which could have exposed thousands of consumers’ payment card data. As with a number of credit card breaches, these breaches were caused by malware, short for malicious software, designed to capture or access the sensitive cardholder information.

While malware itself has been in the news lately with the WannaCry ransomware affecting everything from mom-and-pop businesses to the National Health Service in the UK, malware targeting cardholder information is nothing new. In 2013, Target was a victim of an infamous data breach caused by malware affecting the point-of-sale devices. As the payment card was swiped during the checkout process, cardholder information stored within the card’s magnetic stripe was taken.